Friday, 13 April 2018 11:21:00 am Australia/Brisbane

Every year Bloemenbureau Holland (the promotional organisation for flowers and plants in the Netherlands and Europe) gets together a "media jury" of influential magazine writers, stylists, and bloggers. They choose three plants for the year : for outdoor decks and patios; for balconies and terraces; and for interiors.

The plant chosen by the experts for 2018 for balconies and terraces is lavender!

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Friday, 13 April 2018 11:21:00 am Australia/Brisbane

Every year Bloemenbureau Holland (the promotional organisation for flowers and plants in the Netherlands and Europe) gets together a "media jury" of influential magazine writers, stylists, and bloggers. They choose three plants for the year : for outdoor decks and patios; for balconies and pots; and for interiors.

The plant chosen by the experts for 2018 for decks and patios is the agapanthus!

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Monday, 6 March 2017 11:21:00 am Australia/Brisbane

We’re still sunbaking in the heat of summer, and we need to start thinking about spring? Yes!

A little easy planting now, and we can enjoy a bright fragrant garden from the tail end of winter to the start of next summer.

Bulbs are such rewarding plants to grow - they are child’s play to plant, happy growing in gardens or containers, and can slip into the tiniest spaces to provide a burst of bright colour.

If you have littl’uns, we’ve even got Colchicums, autumn crocus, that will sprout and flower in a dish of water on the kitchen windowsill. You can watch them grow!

We’ve put together a varied range of spring-flowering bulbs for a range of climates, from cold to subtropical. Some are traditional scented flowers from the Mediterranean, some are more unusual flowers from South Africa.

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Monday, 27 February 2017 10:46:03 am Australia/Brisbane

Some of our customers have been asking about our biosecurity restrictions on the website. And why they can't get certain specific plants shipped to their addresses.

Most of the time, these customers are in VIC or SA, while our nursery is in QLD. Here's a short explanation of why we sometimes can't send you the plants you want, depending on where you live.

Garden plants can pick up diseases and viruses from airborne spores, birds' feet, and other plants. It's easy to do and most of the time it doesn't cause any problems. Your plants might look a bit scruffy, or some leaves are marked or spotted.

Practising good plant health -

- feeding and watering plants regularly to keep them fit and thriving,

- pruning where necessary to improve airflow,

- planting in the optimal situation and soil type for that plant variety,

- removing affected parts of the plant

will all help garden plants resist disease.

However, when plant diseases spread to edible, commercial crops such as potatoes, sugar cane and fruit, then it becomes more serious. A disease which makes a garden hedge look less than perfect could wipe out half a field of produce crops. Some diseases and viruses are resistant to, or cannot be treated with, the approved-use chemicals currently available.

Australia has some of the strictest border security in the world. As an island as well as a country we have the advantage of keeping a lot of plants - and plant diseases - away from our shores. Sometimes that means that nurseries such as Australian Plants Online can't import all the kinds of plants and seeds we want to grow.

Individual states set extra rules as to what can be sent over their state borders, as well as the national border import restrictions.

This is an attempt to limit and restrict the potential spread of viruses between plants. Some Australian native plants can be particularly vulnerable to viruses, as the plants evolved in isolation. So the Myrtaceae family;- that's tea tree, eucalypt, bottlebrush, lilly pilly - can't be shipped from our nursery state QLD to SA and VIC. Similar rules apply to azaleas and blueberries.

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Friday, 26 August 2016 11:21:00 am Australia/Brisbane

Try layered hedging

Many of the most popular plants we grow, year round, are hedging plants.

And we’ve noticed an interesting new hedge trend popping up in gardens lately.

Hedges make a fantastic boundary marker to your property, to show exactly the point to where your land runs. They can divide up areas within your garden, to create ‘rooms’ of different styles or plant types, such as a vegetable patch. Low hedges can outline a driveway or path, to make entrance routes to your home clear and dramatic.

Have you seen this new trend where you live, too? The trend is - layered hedges.

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Friday, 12 August 2016 11:21:00 am Australia/Brisbane

Planting in clay soil

We're often asked how to manage clay soil and which plants work best, so we've put together a handy guide to improving your soil and a list of plants best suited to clay. Plants struggle to thrive in clay soil due to the density of it's fine particles-roots have to work extra hard to establish themselves.

How to tell if your soil is clay

Wet clay soil is quite sticky and pliable, it takes a long time to dry out. Once dry, the soil is almost rock hard and impossible to get a shovel into, it's slow to absorb moisture. The plus side to clay soil is that it's loaded with nutrients! Choose plants suited to clay soil and watch them thrive.

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Thursday, 28 July 2016 11:21:00 am Australia/Brisbane

What is tip pruning?

For many of our hedging plants, especially dense-growing ones like Syzygium (lillypilly) and Viburnum and generally most plants that are used for screening or hedging. We recommend tip pruning while young to encourage dense growth and keep your plants looking their best.

You might be familiar with regular pruning. This involves helping a plant grow healthier by completely removing any dead wood, any sickly or weak stems, any branches that cross over or rub against each other, and any that grow in an unattractive direction.

Tip pruning is another method of helping a plant grow healthier.

Instead of removing a complete branch or twig back to a joint, you just snip out the very tip of each stem, about 5cm or less.

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Wednesday, 13 July 2016 4:21:00 pm Australia/Brisbane

Shrubs for flowering hedges

Flowering now - Camellias

We're loving the beautiful winter display, it's wonderful to see colour about the garden in the midst of winter. This inspired us to share our favourite plants for flowering hedges.

Flowering shrubs are ideal for creating privacy in the garden with the benefit of a bounty of flowers to liven things up! They can be clipped neatly in formal gardens or left to ramble for a rustic feel. Flowering hedges may be clipped neatly in formal gardens or left to ramble for a rustic feel. There's flowering shrubs suited to almost any garden, and climate, sun or shade.

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Friday, 27 May 2016 10:29:00 am Australia/Brisbane

The good, the bad and the ugly

Bad bugs eat our plants and ruin crops, leaving our garden a mess and more susceptible to disease.
Good bugs aka Beneficial Insects help to control leaf chewing insects by making a meal out of them.
It's hard to believe the beautiful ladybeetle is actually a seasoned predator!

While the good guys are moving about the garden eating mites, aphids and scale, they're also doing the important job of pollinating our plants.

Too many bad guys in the garden? Try using a natural product like eco-neem to control leaf chewing insects.
Rather than eradicating all insects on contact, the solution is sprayed on the plant and needs to be eaten buy the pest to have any effect. This leaves the good guys to get on with their work!

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Wednesday, 20 April 2016 10:29:00 am Australia/Brisbane

Oh! We do like to be beside the seaside

National lifesaving champs The Aussies are being held this week on the Sunshine Coast, a thong’s throw from our nursery.(We can almost smell the sunscreen from here.)

Our beautiful beaches are a playground for all of us, whether we’re exercising, building sandcastles with the kids, or just taking a stroll.

Living by the coast is relaxing and energising, but can be hard on our garden plants.

The wind dries out their foliage and stunts their growth. There’s often not much shade.Salt spray coats the plants’ leaves, preventing them transpiring easily, and seeps into the soil. Soils are often sandy and very free-draining, as well as salty.